In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, viewed by some as the "bible" of the postmodernism movement, Jean François Lyotard analyzes how the legitimation of knowledge has changed in the computerized societies of the twentieth century. The Report was commissioned by the Conseil des Universités of the Quebec government in order to frame the discussion of incorporating computers into higher education. The postmodern condition is the fundamentally different outlook on knowledge that has arisen after the Enlightenment, and particularly since World War II in Western post-industrial, information-based society. In the Report, Lyotard makes a variety of claims and recommendations about how knowledge, particularly computerized knowledge, in the postmodern condition must be legitimated and made accessible in a just society.

Lyotard believes that cybernetics (computers, telecommunication systems and the various associated disciplines of language and information processing) has come to dominate society and economics since World War II. He believes that the status of knowledge has changed profoundly in this period. The major question that interests him is how knowledge gets legitimated in cybernetic society, and the nature of the legitimation itself. Lyotard maintains that whatever principle society uses to legitimate knowledge must also be the principle that it uses to legitimate decision-making in society, and consequently government, laws, education, and many other basic elements of society. Legitimation in the Enlightment was tied to what Lyotard calls meta-narratives, or grand narratives. Meta-narratives are total philosophies of history, which make ethical and political prescriptions for society, and generally regulate decision-making and the adjudication of what is considered truth. Meta-narratives roughly equate to the everyday notion of what principles a society is founded on. They form the basis of the social boand. The meta-narratives of the Enlightenment were about grand quests. The progressive liberation of humanity through science is a meta-narrative. The quest for a universally valid philosophy for humanity is an example of a meta-narrative. The problem is that when meta-narratives are concretely formulated and implemented, they seem to go disastrously awry. Marxism is the classic case of a meta-narrative based on principles of emancipation and egalitarianism which, when implemented, becomes perverted to totalitarianism under Stalin in the Soviet Union.

Lyotard claims that we have now lost the ability to believe in meta-narratives, that the legitimating function that grand quests once played in society has lost all credibility. The question then becomes, what now forms the basis of legitimation in society if there is no overarching meta-narrative? For Lyotard, the answer lies in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which analyzes the way sub-groups in society regulate their behavior through rules of linguistic conduct. If we have rejected grand narratives, then what we have fallen back on are little narratives. Little narratives are Wittgenstein's "language games", limited contexts in which there are clear, if not clearly defined, rules for understanding and behavior. We no longer give credence to total philosophical contexts like Marxism which ostensibly would prescribe behavior in all aspects of life, rather, we have lots of smaller contexts which we act within. We are employees, we are students. These roles legitimate knowledge and courses of action in their limited contexts. By fragmenting life into a thousand localized roles, each with their particular contexts for judging actions and knowledge, we avoid the need for meta-narratives. This is the nature of the modern social bond. Our effectiveness is judged in the context of how well we perform in each of these many limited roles. We may be a good employee but a poor driver, etc.

Therefore, what legitimates knowledge in the postmodern condition is how well it performs, or enables a person to perform, in particular roles. This criterion forms the basis of Lyotard's "performativity" legitimation of knowledge and action. In a cybernetic society, knowledge is legitimated by how performative it is, if it effective minimizes the various required inputs for the task and maximizes the desired outputs. This is an intuitively compelling notion of our current society. Knowledge and decision-making is for the most part no longer based on abstract principles, but on how effective it is at achieving desired outcomes.

This is a troubling state of affairs for Lyotard, because performativity pays no heed to any kind of ethics. For the legitimating principle of society to ignore the question of ethics is to verge on the equation of "might makes right." Lyotard is fundamentally pluralistic in his inclinations, and detests any kind of philosophy which leads to uniformity of opinion, enforced or otherwise. Science in the service of performativity is particularly troubling to him, as he sees it leading inevitably to rule by terror, whether this is the great terror of a totalitarian state, or the little terror of university reasearch programs being discontinued because they are not sufficiently commercially competitive. Lyotard seeks a form of legitimation that will work in a manner akin to performativity, without recourse to a meta-narrative, but also without the tendency toward a uniform totalization of opinion. He is at pains in particular to combat the continued Marxist tradition of Jürgen Habermas, and his advocacy of a consensus community. As a pluralist, Lyotard does not believe that striving in one way or another to bring every member of community into consensus is healthy. Just as the strength of science rests to a large extent in the continued striving of individuals to competitively voice new views, Lyotard believes that a just system of legitimation must emphasize diversity and the fertile search for new answers to old questions.

"Paralogy" is the legitimating principle that Lyotard puts forward as an answer to these problems. Lyotard develops the concept by first reviewing a variety of non-traditional scientific areas which have proved fruitful in recent years, including chaos theory, fractal mathematics, and quantum mechanics. The key feature of these areas of research which Lyotard believes provides their special strength is that, unlike the incremental and theory-bound work of most areas of the sciences, they actively and imaginatively seek out instabilities and anomalies in current theories. This search for anomalies and paradoxes echoes the type of move that Lyotard previously identified as compelling in language games generally, and he seizes on the concept to form the basis of his legitimation grail. Since the most effective (performative) strategy for achieving advances in both scientifically based and narratively based fields of research is the search for imaginative new insights into existing theories by noting anomalies and paradoxes, he coins a neologistic term: paralogy. Paralogy here does not have the dictionary meaning of "false reasoning", but captures the elements of this individualistic search for new meaning in old language games. Lyotard identifies an important technical requirement for this new legitimation strategy to be effective, namely that the major data banks of information currently hoarded must be freely available in order to create a level playing field for research-oriented language games. This move is in the best interest of the system as a whole, since through intellectual inventions realized by a wide variety of individuals, the performativity of the system improves overall. Paralogy is not mere innovation for its own sake, but a creative and productive resistance to totalizing metanarratives. [Readings, 1991: 73-74] The approach offers justice in the sense that the rights of the individual are respected. Paralogy completes Lyotard's project, forming the basis of a legitimating principle that will respect both his desire for justice and his need for the unknown.

Lyotard believes that current trends in society are moving toward paralogy as a legitimizing principle. He allies the trend toward temporary contracts rather than permanent institutions with paralogy, although he acknowledges that this evidence is equivocal. He does not specifically say whether paralogy will completely overthrow performativity, or simply act in concert with it. This is one of the most problematic areas of his project. The component of the paralogy concept which may initially appears most utopian to our current way of thinking is the idea that data banks can be made freely available to everyone in society. If anything, corporations are inclined to zealously guard access to their databases and provide access to them only through expensive fees. Lyotard describes in great detail the importance of information in world competition for power and economic dominance. He makes an intellectual case for open access to information by a loose appeal to perfect information competitions in game theory, but offers no clear mechanism for moving toward free access to data in society.

I maintain that there is new evidence for paralogy as an actual emerging principle of legitimation in society. The currents of society have clearly continued to flow in the cybernetic directions that Lyotard focuses on. The emerging concept of our society as an "attention economy" has much in common with the theme of paralogy. [Lanham, 1993] Briefly, the concept is that information alone is no longer of much value; we are awash in information, oceans of it, to the point that it is hardly a scarce commodity, as it once was. What is scarce is our time, specifically the limited amount of time that we have to pay attention to new information.

When considered in this light, something like paralogy looks increasingly likely. The Internet is a vast ocean of shared information. What becomes significant is the clear identification of what in this ocean is worthy of attention. This is where paralogy comes in. Lyotard's paralogy can be taken to mean exactly this notion of identifying the worthy new concepts that emerge from the sea of research. This inversion of the rules of the economic game has definite ramifications for higher education's research activities. Quite apart from the ramifications of this point, Lyotard's work makes many specific recommendations that have bearing on the question of the Internet as a medium for scholarly communication. These points must be explored to gain a full sense of how Lyotard's Report addresses the central concerns of my project.